


Beautiful Broken Creatures

by Jen (ConsultingWriters)



Category: James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Consent Issues, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Prostitution, hooker!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-11-28 17:24:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingWriters/pseuds/Jen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q is a hooker. James Bond is in love.</p><p>
  <i>The boy is sharp in all of the right places. His spine is bent in an entrancing curve, leant against the lamp-post, shadows pooling in the indented hollows of his face. He is too-pale, the flush high on his cheekbones from the cold, lips bitten so they retain a deep fuchsia stain.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Shipimpala made this: http://shipimpala.tumblr.com/post/42057974669/00q-au-q-is-a-hooker-james-is-in-love-x-i , and then did a general ask for a hooker!AU with a happy ending. I had an excuse to write this, so I did/am.
> 
> There is sex. There are aspects of violence. There are aspects of non/dubcon (not explicit, but probably implied later, I'll let you know). I had to research a lot of this. If I die, SOMEBODY delete my internet history before my parents find it, I implore you.
> 
> The happy ending is coming. Plot happened when I wasn't looking! They're both very intelligent, mentally very together people - they play games, because they have to. I'll update when I can. 
> 
> Enjoy! Jen.

The boy is sharp in all of the right places. His spine is bent in an entrancing curve, leant against the lamp-post, shadows pooling in the indented hollows of his face. He is too-pale, the flush high on his cheekbones from the cold, lips bitten so they retain a deep fuchsia stain.

He is in spray-on skinny jeans; he knows what he is, what type his clients are seeking. The forbidden temptation of a young-looking teenager, Converse shoes tied haphazardly, the gossamer-thin shirt clinging damply to his skin, leaving nothing to the imagination. Body and skin are subtly on show, with a dash of class that is difficult to find.

The boy is all things to all men, as it were. He is young enough for a certain market, old enough for another, gorgeous in a breakable way that most street-walkers can’t manage any more. Most of them are too broken to look anything but lethally whole. This boy, teen, adult – he has somehow retained the look that everybody sought, but few could find.

He is the right one.

The delectable creature smiles sideways as the car pulls up; a few dribbles of rain fall, unchecked, from the swollen clouds, gathering in dark hair, fragments of a raindrop lingering on the end of an eyelash.

“You have means?” he asks, in a perfect English accent; each consonant is correctly weighted, the vowels toned and rounded in a way born of a childhood of practise. He smiles a pretty, light smile when he sees the cash; more than enough. He slips into the car, each movement calculatedly sensuous; not enough to seem desperate, enough to be tantalising and give the impression of somebody making an effort.

“Your name?”

The whore doesn’t quite smile. He comes very close to it, but it fails to reach the soft, almost cloudy green of his eyes. “Q,” he says simply, lips remaining slightly parted, a question, a query. His name is never usually of importance; this is already a departure from the status quo. His client accepts the pseudonym without question, and that is a small, vague comfort.

“Bond. James Bond,” is the simple reply; the boy who calls himself Q nods his understanding.

“Good evening,” he murmurs; the car blurs through streets, taking Q away from his home territory. He keeps an eye on where they are without it being noticeable; he simple checks which turns they take, how far they go. It is safest. Bond cannot object.

They each take a moment to assess one another. The MI6 driver, who knows nothing, and will remain knowing nothing indefinitely, keeps driving. “Two hundred,” the prostitute tells him. “If you are interested in anything… out of the ordinary, this is the moment to negotiate.”

“I am aware of how this works,” Bond tells him, without mercy. Q nods an understanding, thin smile still taunting Bond, who wants nothing more than to wipe away that smile indefinitely. “Bondage?”

“Fifty. Any damage will be charged depending on scale; if you render me unable to work, for example, I will need to charge accordingly,” Q tells him, seemingly unconcerned by the prospect of Bond causing him physical injury, enough to leave him bedridden, possibly. The thought leads to a further twinge of interest in Bond’s cock, and he decides he _likes_ this boy.

“Understood. As ascertained, I have means.”

Q has been sliding closer by increments, hands gliding across perfect leather seats to reach Bond’s. Skin brushes skin; the moment is small and startling in its enormity. Contact is established, and Bond knows he will not go back from this now.

Bond’s apartment is neat and spacious; Q has to confess to being somewhat more relaxed, safe in the knowledge that Bond had enough money to cover his sexual proclivities. He usually wasn’t asked to discuss less conventional sexual desires that early on, and not when street-walking; more adventurous sexual desires were usually negotiated through his pimp, on home turf.

Nevertheless, they are here, and Q has a fair idea of how the evening will go. He breathes deeply; the place does not smell lived-in. It has the dense taste of dust in the air, a lack of the scents of tea and food and sleep and sex that most homes contain. This is not a home. This is a building, this is a place, and this is a man who is placing money on the table, splayed so he can see the separate notes, and showing him to a bedroom.

The man is certainly experienced. He knows what questions to ask, how to proceed. He knows what is best for them both, for a business contract, and is prepared to behave accordingly.

“Can I call you James?” Q purrs, sidling closer to Bond. His eyebrow arches, and Q’s smile falters slightly.

Bond’s smile teeters perilously close to being genuine. “You may,” he replies simply, as Q reaches out, strokes a line down the contours of Bond’s arm. The muscles are defined, well-used; if that frightens Q, who is aware of easily he can be overpowered, he makes no show of it. Bond could take him apart, and Q is prepared to let him.

Q is maybe an inch shorter than Bond; it takes only the slightest incline of his head to brush lips against Bond’s throat. Not a conventional opening move. Intelligent boy, then; he knows Bond is not like others. They are playing a game, dancing with one another, judging what the other is and needs and wants.

Lips and teeth graze over throbbing arteries, the slightest of pressure, tongue tracing a thin path to the indent beneath his ear. The tongue lingers there, nerve ending fizzling slightly, a slight suck on the earlobe. Q pulls back, and his eyes are sharp in the dim light.

Bond’s hands began to work their way over the boy. The way he moves is not sexual; in another context, he could be frisking Q. It occurs to Q a heartbeat later that that is _precisely_ what Bond is doing. He meets Bond’s impersonal gaze, and the smile is wry and cheeky, and Bond doesn’t react but is quietly delighted that the boy is not an idiot.

As he does each time, Bond wonders vaguely how this boy found himself here. His body holds few stories; the bruises are predictable, tell only of the present, not his past. Drugs are easily spotted and difficult to hide, equally alcohol, and he shows hallmarks of neither. He dresses well; his clothing is not new, but not entirely dilapidated either. He is a conundrum.

Satisfied that the boy is nothing to be concerned about, Bond pulls them together with an abrupt violence that makes the boy gasp beautifully, mouth falling slightly open. Bond’s kiss is designed to bruise; Q responds in kind, desperate and keening and delectable to watch, as tongue and lips and teeth worry at Bond’s, keeps him busy, his brain struggling to track the process.

Q’s hands are delicate, bird-like, brushing, fluttering across him. Bond is harsher, his grip merciless as he digs fingers into the marble skin of Q’s back, finding a handhold on the razor bones of Q’s thin hips, deconstructing the puzzle that is this young man.

Bond pushes him back against the doorframe; the edge cuts in painfully, his head ricochets from the impact, his body twining through and around Bond’s. Q moans softly, and Bond swallows the sound with another kiss, not apologising. Q hadn’t expected him to.

They mutate to the bed without conscious intention, Q is laid down on the soft duvet, smiling absentmindedly at some thought Bond can’t access, and it infuriates him without reason. He wants Q to be present, not merely going through the motions.

Bond does the opposite of what Q expects.

He collapses by Q’s side on the bed, gentle, explorative. The hard edge to his grip abruptly fades out, left with a feather tenderness that usually terrifies those he brings home.

The damned whore doesn’t betray any emotion; he adapts to Bond, moulds himself to needs and expectations without hesitation or question. He takes charge a little more, independently flicking open Bond’s shirt buttons, hands sliding across the defined torso and giving a very faint smile of satisfaction. Bond cannot help but cherish it, that quirk, that tiny glimpse of what Q is actually thinking.

The game turns into an all-out battle. Bond has no clue of who’s winning, but the fight is more consuming than he had known possible.

Q is obediently hard, no way of telling if it’s a learned response or genuine, and Bond isn’t entirely sure he cares. Bond strips him with some care; the clothes were probably hard-won, destroying them would be unkind. 

Q naked is a lovely thing. He is too thin, and bears the predictable marks of his profession; it is another edge on Bond’s desire, knowing he is broken and yet so appallingly beautiful.

Bond strokes him, caresses him. He takes the young man apart, because he can. Q lets out fractured moans as Bond’s body mimics truth, bucking for contact, expression contorted with want. He starts to form words, and Bond slaps him.

Q looks… disappointed. It is not what Bond expected. He had expected maybe anger, shock, upset, hurt. Q continues to surprise him, and that in itself is _addictive_.

Bond finds these whores because he needs them; he needs the physical and mental release. He seeks out beings like Q for the thrill of raw power. The ability to pull a life from beneath somebody’s feet. A challenge. He uses somebody like Q to occupy his mind and body, when everything else goes to hell.

Cruel, possibly. He isn’t overwhelmingly repentant; he finds people who sell themselves, and buys them. He uses them for his purposes, because that is what they bargained for, and he stops thinking about them afterwards.

Q is disappointed. Not angry, but _disappointed_. The thought needles its way into Bond’s mind, throbs there, hot and immediate.

Bond leans in, kisses the patch of highlighted dark pink, and Q’s disappointment softens slightly. He kisses Bond in return, as though worshipping everything Bond is, and Bond quite likes it. There is no desperation or need to prove; Q is just Q. He is a young man and a whore, and does not try to act as though he is more than that.

Bond’s slick fingers play around Q’s hole, testing, probing; Q gasps very faintly when Bond pushes inside, moaning delightfully when Bond’s finger, soon fingers, brush his prostate. His back arches, pushing for more, allowing Bond to play him ever closer to orgasm; Bond stops him moments from the end, Q letting out a little wail.

Q forgets, just for a moment. He knows from experience that he will not be allowed to come, not until after Bond at least; yet Q forgets entirely, gives himself up to Bond so completely that he loses track of the fact that he exists for Bond. Only for Bond.

They move like old lovers, familiar motions. Q remains facing Bond, Bond lying back, Q lowering himself onto Bond with an almost-sobbing cry; not quite enough preparation, not quite enough lube, a little uncomfortable but not actively painful.

Q finds it an interesting novelty; the position allows him to dictate pace, rhythm; usually he is passive, an object, expected to lie back and moan in the right places and have no real input in the proceedings. Q had known Bond would be different from early on; he hadn’t honestly expected that to be a good thing, until this moment.

The sex is gentle. Q can honestly say that is a relief; he had expected handcuffs and beatings, and instead finds somebody who kisses beautifully, takes him to pieces in a way he doesn’t actually mind.

Bond is also very, very good at sex. He has an uncanny ability to find the places that set Q alight, and Q can do more than merely reciprocate. Bond begins hurting towards orgasm, as Q kisses and sucks and rides him until his vision starts whiting, breathtakingly perfect in his systematic destruction.

Q is close, startlingly close. He usually has to try a _lot_ harder to actually orgasm with his clients. Bond’s hand runs along his length, and the noise he makes is a long way from elegant or refined, and Bond’s gravelled voice says “ _now_.”

Bond comes a matter of moments after Q does; every muscle in Q’s body seems to contract around him at once, a rhythm that throws Bond off course, coming hard into the condom Q magicked onto him earlier on in the proceedings. He can hear the echoes of his own name, screamed out through Q’s rounded voice, and it’s _gorgeous_.

The post-coital whiteout is both the best and worst part. The best, because it feels wonderful, and Q’s body is warm and slightly sweat-slicked, and he breathes harshly against Bond’s ear and Bond wants to hear that sound forever. The worst, because Q is there for a reason, and cannot delay; he starts to shift long before Bond wants him to.

“Stay,” Bond asks. Q raises an eyebrow at him. “How much will you charge?”

“How much are you offering,” Q counters; Bond smiles despite himself. Clever little whore. He knows Bond wants him, and knows Bond has more than enough money; he is taking Bond’s desire, and manipulating it for his ends.

Bond can play this game, if needed. He wants to keep the boy, and he always would prefer to be surprising, if he can be. A game-changer is required. “Two grand,” he says calmly, enunciating carefully so there can be no question.

Q cannot hide his shock, so he doesn’t try. “Done,” he says quickly, and Bond laughs. Q doesn’t both to seek proof, when they both know Bond can pay him, so he settles a little more. “I’ll need to leave by eight.”

Bond shrugged. “I have no problem with that. Do you?”

Q wants to be honest. He wants to say that the idea of spending the entire night with Bond is simultaneously exhilarating and simply terrifying. He wants to say that he has so many problems with this situation that it makes him want to cry, in the openly desperate way children do. 

He wants to say he doesn’t have a goddamn choice, because he is expected to earn a certain amount when he’s street-walking, and this will keep him free from unpleasant clients for a few days because his goddamn pimp will be impressed. Even on a very good night, it’s hard to make more than a grand, maybe an extra two or three hundred, and Q finishes those nights feeling like he’s been run over by a truck. He somehow guesses it won’t be like that with Bond.

It’s a ridiculous amount of money, disproportionate. But if Bond is offering, Q is happy to accept.

Bond tugs Q back into bed, kisses him slowly, languidly. Q always finds the long nights odd; they are rarer, for him at least, and there is no defined code of behaviour. Both parties will recover relatively quickly, and Q will be fucked again, and the hours will pass.

Q whines out _James_ in a soft, echoing voice; Bond strokes his hair gently, kisses him insistently, repeatedly, as the time passes. He is hard again soon enough; he finds himself oddly careful with Q, looking after him, and it is transparently obvious that Q hasn’t been cared for in a long while.

He fucks Q again several times over the course of the night, never harshly, always reciprocal pleasure; he wants his money’s worth, he just doesn’t feel the need to treat Q like nothing more than a sentient sex toy in the process. Q grows warier by each passing minute. This is not how he had expected this to go.

They both grow tired; Q battles to stay awake because he has to. Bond knows Q is barely with him any more, lets the exhausted boy slip into an uneasy unconsciousness.

Q is delicate and fragile, and yet stronger than Bond has ever seen from anybody. The sex is exquisite. The boy himself is truly lovely, twisted in a tight knot against Bond’s chest, forehead crumpled with troubles sleep can’t wipe out.

When morning hits, Bond cannot help but be impressed at how quickly Q reaches professionalism. He wakes with an expression of tangible panic; a moment, remembering where he is, what he is doing. He glances at Bond with an expression of merged discomfort and confusion; terror lives somewhere there too, but Q knows better.

“Shower’s next door, if you want,” Bond offers. Q’s eyes narrow slightly, and Bond can’t help the small snort as he tells Q: “You don’t have to.”

Q reeks of sex, and cannot deny that he is… sticky, to put it lightly. He mumbles a thanks, diving into the bathroom as though he is ashamed, all of a sudden. Bond does note, however, that he doesn’t lock the door, expecting Bond to follow him.

The shower itself an odd contraption, far removed from anything Q has been around in recent weeks and months. He stabs at buttons, finally finding warmth, toppling into the jet of water and letting out the breath he’s been half-holding all night.

He wonders when he became so used to this being unpleasant, that he forgot what real sex was like. How almost-reciprocity felt. Kisses that aren’t purely possessive, touches that do not bruise, crying out somebody’s name in ecstasy that is in no way forced, or fake; it has been so long, and this has completely disrupted _everything_.

He moves quickly. He will be expected back imminently. He is oddly devoid of the bone-deep feeling of dirt; this only serves to increase his mounting alarm at this situation, and he dresses quickly, damp hair clinging to his skull, the back of his neck.

Bond is dressed. The suit is worth more than the night, in monetary terms. Q throws on the same clothes as he was wearing the night before, looking out of place, but almost like any other teenager. The clothing is immensely clever, in that respect. 

Oh, but Q is a fascinating little creature.

Bond watches Q try to extract a slip of paper from his back pocket; he registers some mild surprise that there’s any room in there. He presses it into Bond’s hand without explanation, and Bond hands over two thousand pounds, in cash. Q glances at it, doesn’t check it properly, rams it awkwardly down his trousers – he takes it as a given that Bond will have paid him properly.

“Thank you,” Bond says politely, once he has escorted Q to the entrance of the building; his flat is isolated within the confines of an oversized building. It is easy to get lost. That is his reasoning, in any case.

Q half smiles, and nods.

Bond watches Q leave. He finds the main road, vanishes without looking back. It occurs to Bond that Q probably has little clue of where he is. He has a specific destination, and that is all that matters.

The slip of paper simply reads ‘Q’, with a number beneath.

Bond falls back onto the main stairs of his building, looking out, holding his head between his hands. This is quite spectacularly bad. He cannot feel like this, he cannot _be_ like this.

Yet it cannot be denied that he hasn’t felt like this since Vesper, a lifetime ago. He remembers, now; every thought bending towards one person, one focal point. Nothing can sway it, nothing can change it. The mystery, the allure, the lethal danger and sheer beauty. They are so similar, and so different, and Bond needs to see Q again. He wants to unravel the mysteries cloaking him, learn his stories, love him.

He stares at the slip of paper, and is falling apart.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the immense response to this fic! There is a fair amount to come - I'll update as I can. Warnings in this chapter for distinct consent issues, some (mild) violence, and implied _everything_. A lot of what these two do revolves around implication. Sexual content is also something of a given.
> 
> Shipimpala, I still blame you for all this. I'm slipping in oblique references to the original gifsets, catch 'em if you can!
> 
> Enjoy.

“I’m looking for Q,” Bond tells the obnoxious, smug-sounding bastard at the other end of the phone. He can’t say he’s surprised that Q doesn’t have his own phone; there had to have been something, some odd thing that would explain why somebody like Q was in this business. A man like this explains things adequately enough.

Bond needs to see Q again, which is curious in itself. He never uses the same whore twice, mostly for security reasons – this is breaking any established norms, and he can’t even claim to upset about this fact. Two weeks have passed, and Bond cannot forget the fascinating boy.

Also, after Q left, Bond found that one of the halogen lights in his bathroom had broken. It seemed that several relatively important wiring components had gone AWOL, when he gets a Q-branch technician to look at it. Bond is no idiot. He simply doesn’t know _why_.

He goes to the address he is given – a brothel, in a single building of a residential street – and haggles with the pimp; the price is initially extortionate. Evidently, they assume that Bond will always pay high; he disabuses the slimy-looking man of that notion very quickly.

Bond dislikes the man immensely. He has spent too much time around unpleasant people to know the type, recognise the type of person with a streak of sadism and just enough intelligence to keep himself protected from all possible harm.

The pimp smiles superciliously, and hands Bond a room key.

Q is waiting for him, leaning against the headboard; he scrambles to attention when he hears noise, not quite fast enough for Bond to miss. He kneels on the bed, facing the door, expression neutral, that slightly coquettish smile still playing recognisably in the corners of his mouth.

His eyes widen slightly at the sight of Bond. Oddly, it is this tiny quirk that lets Bond know he is tired. Last they met, Q had been flawless in presentation, in every aspect. He has slipped, fractionally.

“Good evening, James,” Q murmurs, and Bond can remember why Q seems quite so interesting. His intelligence is obvious in the simple way he constructs those few words; the placing of emphasis, the tone of voice, are all so perfectly calculated. He is not merely good at his job, he is _extraordinary_.

He looks very different to the previous night; the makeup is heavy, the net vest-top cliché. He is still spellbindingly beautiful, but in a way that screams sex and nothing else. It is quite obviously not his choice.

Bond slides to the bed, the springs silent as he sits. Q shifts closer, and fingers are trailing, and kissing him is familiar and gentle and tender.

Q could cry.

“I assumed you’d be working the streets,” Bond noted quietly, as Q kisses him like he’s _needed_. Q shakes his head, hands grasping at Bond, not even sexual – it’s like confirming he’s still there, and Bond keeps having to remind himself that this is Q’s job. He knows what Bond wants, and is supplying it. He _has_ to remember what Q is.

Q sighed out a breath. “I’m only out once or twice a week,” he explains. “It’s my bit of freedom. I can do what I like, as long as I come back with money.”

Bond continues to kiss him for a moment, before his lips trail up to Q’s ear: “And my bathroom light?” he asks, a shadow of anger, of danger, in his tone.

Q freezes for a fraction of a second, and Bond knows he has the boy caught. In a series of fluid, vicious motions, Q is slammed against the headboard with wrists caught in Bond’s closed fingers. He hisses slightly as his head impacts with a muted thump, Bond’s grasp bruisingly tight.

Bond’s eyes are black, merciless. Q’s are very slightly wide, but unrepentant.

“Tell me the truth, or I will talk to him,” Bond says, a head nodding to the door, to the man waiting outside for an excuse.

Q is completely motionless, completely expressionless, almost cold. He is no longer pretending, and Bond understands a little more of the kind of person Q is.

Q shuts off absolutely everything, and pretends he isn’t frightened.

“Can’t you guess?” Q shoots out; his body is pliant, but his voice is angular and furious. The duality is dizzying to watch, gives him an edge of lethal unpredictability. “You’ve met him. Do you really think he’s the type to allow me any leeway? I need some power of my own.”

The tone of voice is patronising, and angrier than Bond had guessed Q capable of. He has underestimated the boy, a frankly suicidal mistake. “The wires?” Bond asks; it still doesn’t make sense.

Q’s eyes dart to the door, and back to Bond. “I’m creating a device that can rip information from his phone, and/or laptop. There’s enough information there to bury him several times over. If I have that information, I can at least _try_ and open a dialogue, and improve my living situation. I’ve been working on this for months, trying to get component parts together.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Q raises an eyebrow. “You are trained in unarmed combat, that much is obvious. If you wanted, you could make my life unpleasant, and painful. I don’t have the patience. You won’t tell him, anyway.”

“Why not?” Bond asks, eyes narrowing slightly. There are very few people who can predict his actions, and a pretty, clever whore is apparently one of them.

The boy’s eyeroll finally breaks Bond’s temper; he hits Q, hard, the boy blinking tears away slightly but otherwise not responding. His breathing increases faintly, trying to keep himself a little more in check. Bond is not an ally, nor is he consistent.

They’re both reassessing parameters and failing entirely, both appreciating now that a single night is nowhere near enough to understand the other.

“You’re not naïve enough to believe he’ll let it go,” Q says carefully, so quietly. “You don’t want to be responsible for what he will inevitably do to me. You like me. I believe some part of you even wishes to look after me. Futile, yes, but endearing all the same.”

Bond cannot fault Q’s reasoning, although somewhat resents being asked to show his hand; yes, he wishes to take care of Q. To be quite frank, he wishes a considerable amount more than that, but is working on suppressing those instincts as best he can.

He releases Q’s wrists; the boy moves slowly, pulling his hands down towards his chest, Bond shifting from his position above to release him completely. Q stays still, as though stunned by what has just transpired, as though waiting for the sword to fall.

“I’m sorry,” Q lies, eyes wide and innocent; Bond snorts with derision, and Q’s smile turns almost genuine. Of course he is lying, and he isn’t even faintly sorry. If he has a chance – even a slight chance – he will take it, and never be sorry for it.

Bond kisses him anyway, forgiving him.

Q doesn’t understand. Bond has that effect, it seems. He makes no sense at all. He can hit hard enough to make his ears ring, and kiss him a moment later with the tenderness of a long-time lover.

He is a contradiction. But then, they both are.

Q studies his body with a series of kisses, documenting Bond’s form pseudo-religiously; Bond allows him. There are not there to talk. Q doesn’t say a word, just gasps and moans in the right places. Bond tells himself repeatedly to not become attached to a whore, even if he is a very good one, even if it is _Q._

Bond leaves Q with a kiss brushed against a temple. As he does so, he sees that ice again, the coldness Q keeps hidden – only the rest of him screams out his vulnerability, and Bond cannot help but feel utterly confused. He doesn’t make _sense_.

It is that thought which brings Bond back, an embarrassingly small handful of days later.

-

Q is tense and quiet when Bond next visits, and returns almost no conversation. He still plays his part, but for the first time, it is obvious that it is nothing more than a part.

For the briefest of moments, when they are done, when Q’s body is moulded against his, Bond could swear he hears the slightest hitch of breath, something which on anybody else could be called a sob.

Absurd.

-

The next time, nearly three weeks later, Q is chatty and light, friendly. Bond has to admit the boy seems practically bloody bipolar.

The sex is passionate, Bond showing a marked reluctance to leave, and asking nonchalantly when Q will next be on the streets. Q smiles dreamily at the ceiling, tells Bond to find him in the same place as before. Bond kisses him in thanks, and leaves Q behind.

-

They spend another full night at Bond’s flat.

Bond pays less, but hands Q a piece of MI6 Q-branch tech, some part of him noting the irony; Q disassembles it in a matter of seconds, takes away a few component parts, throws his arms around Bond in an act of physical intimacy that the two haven’t managed to share before this point.

“Thank you,” Q breathes, with ferocious honesty.

Bond quite suddenly finds it difficult to breathe. 

Q kisses him with perfect finesse, tongue dancing over smooth teeth, and slips out into the lightening morning.

-

Q asks questions in a flippant manner, and Bond finds he doesn’t mind answering. Yes, he works for MI6. Yes, he is an MI6 agent.

When all of this becomes evident, Q laughs, for some odd reason.

“He knows I’m good with technology,” Q tells him, referencing the pimp without ever naming him – a learned quirk. “Everyone here is known by an initial. He called me Q to take the piss out of the fact that I would never work in MI6. I could have been an extraordinary Quartermaster. I wanted to be, once.”

Bond’s brain lingers on these thrown facts for a moment, the most Q has ever told him of himself; a few further layers fall away from the enigma that is Q, and Bond grasps at the words greedily, cataloguing them with merciless precision.

Q realises what he’s said a heartbeat after Bond does, and will not say another word for the duration of the night.

-

Later, and Bond has been gone for several weeks on a mission that had been abortive from start to finish. He is angry, and not in the mood for Q’s bullshit. He finally takes advantage of the toys dotted around the room; he lets himself enjoy Q’s moans, his tears, his cries, his screams. It is rougher than ever before by a long margin, Q gagging around his cock with bright eyes sparkling.

Bond watches a being like Q, somebody so complex, so untouchable. He sees that being sob – wanting more, wanting less, wanting _something_ – and it is power, unbridled power. He does not regret it in the slightest.

He occurs to him afterwards he didn’t ask, or even warn Q, of how the evening would go. He also can’t help but realise that Q didn’t offer so much as a syllable of protest, or even surprise. He just took it, and watched Bond walk away afterwards without a word.

-

A week later, and Bond lets Q take something out of the back of his phone. He doesn’t ask what it is. It doesn’t affect the phone in any discernable way. He doesn’t ask for details. Q had been quiet and obedient, too quiet; Bond offered up the phone as an apology, the only thing he can really give the boy.

Q kisses him with a delicate smile, and Bond once again leaves.

-

Over a month later, and Q is street-walking in the rain.

He lied. He told Bond he was at the brothel for the next few days, when they last had met. He lied, because this truly is his only freedom, these moments on his own, shaking with the cold and wet, allowed to be on his own and making his own decisions, faking autonomy for a few borrowed hours.

He doesn’t want to be committed to just seeing Bond in those times. He wants a life of his own, and he grasps for one wherever he can find it, even if it more notional than an expression of what he actually _wants_.

The rain is hard. It had been raining the night they met, but only very lightly – summer was kind. Now, it is a few months later; the evenings are colder, and the rain itself is relentless.

Q hates winter.

He wears the right expression as he saunters towards the car, as though it is not the only option he’s had all night, as though it doesn’t matter, as though he has the choice of walking away.

He is cold. The cold eats away at him, makes him feel sick – he is craving warmth and heat and touch, and finds it slightly sad that his job doesn’t quite supply them.

The window rolls down, and it is Bond. Q can’t bring himself to care. He is so cold, so _fucking_ cold, and the rain is drowning him, and Christ knows he’s not going to find any better options at this time of night.

Bond folds him into his arms and has them driven to his flat. Q tries to behave as expected, he truly does, but the shaking has become all he is capable of. He is no longer in control, and Bond can see that; Q waits to be chucked out, to be forced back into the rain, and his sloppy kisses become frantic – he cannot afford to lose a client.

He bundles Q into the shower, tugging the drenched shirt off, helping Q out of the trousers. The warm water makes him sob slightly, curled in a foetal position in the jet of water, hoping the sheer volume hides the fact that he can’t stop crying.

Bond helps dry him, running a towel through his hair; Q is warmer now, is beginning to take back whatever disjointed form of control he pretends to have on a day-to-day basis.

“Q, don’t be an idiot. Go to sleep,” Bond tells him. Q wants to argue, but the world is blurring, and blacking out. He doesn’t mean to, not really, but he sleeps.

-

The sex is the morning is mostly gratitude, and also a lot of some nameless emotion Q cannot afford to analyse very closely.

-

Bond doesn’t ask why Q is there. He doesn’t ask any questions, because Q will either lie, or deflect the conversation. Q tells him bits and pieces without meaning to; Bond knows he is clever, knows he is strong, and knows he has no intention of leaving his industry, for whatever reason.

Q answers the question without Bond needing to ask, the pair lying in bed, breathless and sticky. “I have nowhere to go,” he breathes, eyes closed, blocking out much of what Bond can read from him. Q’s eyes have always been expressive.

He doesn’t ask, but Q answers regardless, in gestures and action and kisses and sex. He knows precisely why Q is there; the marks from other clients do not fade in a hurry. It is easy to forget that Q has sex for a living, and certainly not just with Bond; each night that Bond isn’t there, he is busy moaning and arching and screaming for somebody else.

The jealousy hits Bond hard, blinding him.

\---

Q knocks back the shot of whatever unidentifiable alcohol Bond has brought with him, as Bond dresses. Q’s eyes are dark, and he looks tired. There is a deep, purple bruise over his stomach that wasn’t Bond’s doing, and he has been jumpy all night.

“Are you alright?” Bond asks; he never usually bothers asking questions like that, when the answer is liable to be an outright lie.

Instead, Q snorts contemptuously, glancing around to find his clothes. “Try not to patronise me,” he says coldly, his movements slightly too pronounced; Bond hadn’t noticed before, it is more obvious when he is walking around.

“I’m not…”

“I’m fine, James,” Q tells him, his eyes blurry, and he has told himself it wouldn’t do this. He needs Bond to leave, now. He can deal with this on his own, he always _has_ dealt with this on his own.

Bond may have some odd sense that he and Q have a different type of relationship from every other client Q sees. In some ways, that is true. In some ways, that is not. At the end of it – Bond is able to come and go and he pleases. Bond may be kinder, may be more sympathetic, may be any number of things – but Q is still just a whore, to him. He is somebody to be bought, and used, whenever he wants.

Q doesn’t have an option. He will see Bond at any time of the day and night, as he has been for over six months now. He needs the money too badly not to. He literally cannot refuse.

-

“Q is not available,” Bond is told; he growls very slightly, patience wearing slightly thin.

Bond is not allowed to contact Q directly; every appointment goes through this repulsive man, who recognises Bond’s voice, is accustomed to the fact that Bond will only be satisfied with Q.

“Where is he?”

“Unavailable,” the man repeats, as though Bond is very stupid. “Call back in a week.”

Bond hangs up, anger and worry and a tiny flash of magnesium-bright fear conspiring somewhere in the back of his mind.

 _If you render me unable to work, I will need to charge accordingly._ Q’s words come back at him with a vengeance, and Bond doesn’t know, but can guess. He flicks through what could have possibly been done, to leave Q out of action for a full week.

Bond knows this has to stop. He cannot remain this ridiculously obsessed with a single whore, and because of the type of whore Q is, he cannot simply ‘rescue’ him. He is not arrogant enough to believe he knows what Q wants, nor is he selfish enough to make the decision regardless.

He wants Q to want to leave, which seems optimistic at present.

He has seen the tiny creation Q has been working on, in his spare seconds – Q was days away from completing it, when last Bond saw him. Bond had no clue if Q had qualifications – which he found substantially unlikely, given Q’s experience within his industry – but he had intelligence, and application.

There were always options. Q just needs to be shown them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, do let me know what you think! I'll update when I can.
> 
> For Lex.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to everybody reading/subscribing etc, it's a real honour. No new warnings. 
> 
> A million thanks again to shipimpala, who is a gorgeous human being, and facilitated all this with her gifsets: http://shipimpala.tumblr.com/tagged/00q -gifsets of 00Q, have a look, they're brilliant.
> 
> Jen.

Q’s vision swims into focus as he listens to a voice, somebody speaking to him. The voice isn’t angry; he keeps himself from flinching, trying to listen, trying to make sense of the strings of vowels and harsh, clipped consonants that buzz around the small room.

The fear stabs him everywhere at once.

“What’s going on?” he asks, voice tense. He tries to move; his ankles and wrists are attached to the chair legs and arms respectively. He cannot move, and as the panic sets it, is finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. He isn’t wearing his own clothes, his left wrist is wrapped tightly in a bandage and doesn't hurt, and he smells of some type of chemical disinfectant usually found in hospitals.

They do not ask his name, nor do they call him anything. They explain that he has no choice but to do as they ask, or he will not be released from this room. He will not be in any way harmed, nor do they wish to know about any aspect of his life. All they ask is for him to complete the tests they have for him. 

His wrists are unshackled from the chair. There are papers on the desk, and a ballpoint pen. There is also a laptop on standby, waiting.

Q has no reason to argue. These type of people are readable through their too-secure masks; an assessment for some organisation or other, most likely. He wonders absently how they found him, and realises he simply doesn’t care. He needs to get back, and they will only allow him to do so if he cooperates.

The tests range from the infantile types of ‘intelligence tests’ he was able to circumnavigate from a young age, to more complex forms of lateral reasoning that bend his mind in a way he rarely has need to explore.

When they finish, something pricks the side of his neck. He passes out in seconds. Wakes up where he started with a slight headache, smelling of hospital disinfectant.

-

Bond reads the collated information. Nobody is concerned with Q’s identity, quite frankly; if MI6 absorb him into their mechanism, it is probably easiest – with his background – to simply create their own story. Remould him to their specifications, leave no trace of him behind.

MI6 assessments are generally known to be unpleasant, especially if the subject is one with a questionable history. The target is abducted, and relocated, in the space of twelve hours. It is usually an ample time frame for even the resilient ones to do as they are told.

They do not answer any questions. They tell the subject what they need to do, and wait for them to do it. Nothing more.

M had raised an eyebrow when Bond detailed location and profession, but made no comment. If Q is good, then it matters very little where he comes from. Bond made sure there was no reference to him when they brought Q in; he simply left MI6 with a name and an address, and allowed them to do their worst.

Q is actually a considerable degree better than ‘good’. His tested IQ registers at genius level, and despite having precious little exposure to computers in previous years, he understands the mathematics and intricacies of coding without effort. If he permitted long-term access, given training, he could achieve extraordinary things.

-

Two days later finds Q in Bond’s flat. When Bond peels away Q’s sparse clothing, it becomes obvious why he had been ‘unavailable’; his body is a patchwork of colours, shading from now-fading purples and reds to the lighter brush-strokes of green and yellow. The bandage is still tightly wound around his left wrist.

Q’s expression doesn’t waver as Bond touches him, betrays no pain. Bond treats him like glass, and Q pretends, because that is what he is good at.

Neither mentioned the hours Q spent in MI6 custody. Q certainly doesn’t speak about how his pimp reacted when he found Q had been off-radar for a day. Bond’s lips rest against his throat; Q sighs, closes his eyes, wonders very briefly what it would be like if Bond bit down. Broke open an artery, let him bleed out in peace, in warmth, in comfort.

Bond is terrifyingly gentle, and Q’s fingers clench in a spasm around his arms, holding him there. Bond feels them, his mind meandering; death grips cannot be prised apart unless you break the fingers, snap them, a violent end to a desperate act.

Q kisses him again, and Bond tastes salt water.

-

Q wakes up, once again shackled to a chair. This time, he cannot help but feel intensely irritated by the proceedings; they cannot keep doing this whenever they like, haul him out of his life and simply throw him back when they grow bored with him.

And yet, they can. Of course they can. Whoever they are, they could kill him now, and nobody would notice. Q doesn’t even have a real name; he has an initial that was branded onto him, to drown every other record of a person he once was, could have been.

Bond walks into the room.

“MI6, then,” Q murmurs to himself, eyes slipping shut for a moment, grieving. His voice has a million inflexions: “You did this.”

The agent takes a seat opposite Q, signalling for the boy to be released from the chair. Q moves slowly, watching Bond like he doesn’t recognise him. 

“You are being offered a role with the government,” Bond tells him, voice oddly dispassionate; Q has never seen Bond with this many layers of mask. It renders him almost unrecognisable. “Q-branch of MI6 believes you have potential. They are prepared to offer you a new life. Training in MI6 operations within research and development; with no ties, you could be cleared to move on active missions within a few years.”

Q looks at his hands, his wrists. The red handcuff marks are visible over the older bruises; the irony makes him smile, very slightly, very sadly. 

“You can get fucked,” he replies clearly, looking back up at Bond. His expression doesn’t waver, but Q knows him too well; his gaze betrays confusion. “You really think that you can tell me what to do with my life? That you can invade, and be magnanimous about it?”

“It’s a chance to leave,” Bond points out carefully.

Q’s laugh is bitter and hollow. “I could do that myself, I _want_ to do that myself. I don’t want to simply change hands. Jesus, Bond, I’m not going to sign over my life to new management just because you’re developed a moral compass.”

“Moral compass?” Bond asks, eyes narrowing faintly. Q sits placidly with his hands in his lap, expression flashing fire, poised to burn.

“You’ve been buying my body semi-regularly for the last several months, and I’m supposed to believe that this,” Q said, with a contemptuous flick at his surroundings. “Is coincidental?!”

“This has nothing to do with us,” Bond says, with an inherent emphasis on the _us_. Q just stares at him, angered more by the denial than the fact as it stands.

“Doesn’t it?”

Q refuses to say another word to him. Bond attempts to probe; Q merely watches him with an utterly empty gaze, the few inches of space between them bouncing echoes in its enormity.

Bond leaves, in the end.

Another man replaces him; he doesn’t introduce himself, just places a card on the table with a single number typed across it. “You can call in if you change your mind,” the man tells him, looking like a politician; perfectly styled hair, crisp suit, neutral expression. “Use clearance code RX007, and we will extract you from your location. Needless to say, we will be taking affirmative action should you choose to discuss what has transpired in these rooms.”

Q’s expression matches Tanner’s in neutrality. “Drug me and put me back where you found me,” he asks flatly.

The door opens, and somebody enters with a syringe. Q’s smile is thin as they worry around him, seeking a vein; he does as he’s told, eager to avoid another needle in his neck. The entry wounds ache when he wakes up otherwise.

“I don’t suppose I will receive compensation for my lost work hours?” he asks, as they slide the needle into his wrist, and his vision starts swimming. “You’ve taken two days of my life, after all.”

Tanner’s expression doesn’t change, and he doesn’t seem inclined to argue. “Your rate of pay?”

Q’s laugh is soft and hurt, as the world falls out of focus, out of technicolour: “Ask Bond.”

-

Bond doesn’t understand, and doesn’t pretend to, and doesn’t try to. He waits until he sees Q again, and asks, cagey and tense; Q is sprawled over the bed, dildo keeping him stretched for convenience, and doesn’t look around.

“I’m here for one purpose,” Q says mutely, shifting himself into position for his client, arse in the air. If he finds it humiliating, he doesn’t show as much as a shadow of it. “Just… get on with it, and leave. I don’t want to discuss it, there’s nothing to say.”

Both of them wait, mired by their inability to communicate. Q’s breath caught in his throat as Bond moved behind him, breathed out slowly, hands moving to his hips.

“You know what?” Bond says from behind him, his own voice closing around him, strangling words. “Sod this.”

Q has enough time to turn around awkwardly, in time to see Bond fastening his clothes. He doesn’t ask what Bond is doing – he is mostly grateful, in a way he usually cannot afford to be when clients walk out on him. 

Bond doesn’t look back as he walks out, the door slamming obviously behind him, cutting him off. Q twists himself into the sheets, trying to find a position that is vaguely comfortable, and carefully measures each breath. No hitches. He has an hour or so of freedom, then he will be expected to be ready for the next client.

He cannot cope with much more of this. 

He sleeps.

-

Q’s body is rocked rhythmically back and forth, face down against a mattress that smells very faintly of mould. There are hands clenched around his hips, forcing him to take more, do more. He has learnt over the years to let his mind detach for clients like this; they don’t care about his engagement in the situation, he is barely there, a warm hole to use.

Q frightens himself by thinking of Bond, when the man behind him comes, hips stuttering, his grip making Q wince.

The man strokes his hair in an unwitting, mocking parody. Q smiles dreamily, because that is what the man wants from him, and Q can supply it.

It is becoming far harder to supply everybody’s whims. Q spends his life being what other people desire, to the extent that being ‘desirable’ has no meaning for him any more. He is losing his grasp of who the hell he even is, any more.

His little device, the product of so many months of work, is finished. He merely needs a moment, an opportunity. Yet he is so tired; he breathes in exhaustion like oxygen, the thing that tethers him to life, and keeps going for fear of what else there is, or indeed isn’t. He has never been existential before.

He misses warmth, and comfort, and touch. He misses something he never had, but would have grasped for in a heartbeat if he knew how. He mourns the death of a dream.

-

A month passes, and there is no word from Q.

Bond drinks himself to borderline catatonia on a semi-regular basis. He hasn’t seen Q since walking out on the boy, and he also cannot seem to stop thinking about him.

For reasons known only to himself, Tanner send Bond through the copies of the statutory surveillance MI6 keeps on their potential operatives. Just Q, for him. Bond glances through the photographs, the images taken through windows; Q is getting thinner, starting to look genuinely ill.

Worry settles heavily in Bond’s stomach. Q is no longer as polished; his back curves against the lamp-post, shadows making his face look oddly gaunt, the pure, pale skin turned sallow.

He drinks, because there is nothing else he can do. He cannot help; Q will construe that as interference. He cannot keep watching, because this is _killing_ him.

The phone rings at ten past three in the morning. “Bond?” he answers sharply, shaking off sleep instantaneously, ready for whatever crisis he’s been woken for, flicking on his side light to throw the room into fathomless shadows.

There is no suggestion of light outside. Winter fell forever ago; Christmas and New Year came and went without interest to Bond, February now encroaching rapidly.

“We had a call under your signal – it’s your Q,” Tanner tells him; Bond’s breath comes incrementally quicker, mouth falling slightly slack as the news registers, not even noticing how Tanner labels him _yours_. “I am sending you the audio from the call. He is being transferred to MI6 Medical.”

“Understood,” Bond replies, and doesn’t query the kindness; Tanner is excellent at his job, after all. He knows what matters to his staff, where their thoughts tend. Not knowing would be lethal, in a world where everybody depends on one another to be whole, and truthful, while lying comes easier than breathing.

Tanner tells him, because Bond needs to know. That is all that ultimately matters, and Bond is quite happy to accept it.

-

“Emergency line. Security code?”

_“RX007.”_

“Received. We have a fix on your location, extraction team will be deployed. Physical state?”

_“B-been better.”_

“Please clarify?”

_“… hurts… The… the unconscious man with me… he stays where he is… I… erm… fuck. Just… If anybody knocks me out, take the stick out my pocket and don’t… don’t lose it…”_

“Sir? Please stay on the line. Can you give me your name?... Hello? Sir? Can you hear me?”

_“…Q. M’name’s Q.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will update as soon as I am able. Thank you again for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe this will be the penultimate chapter, ladies and gentlemen. For now, Q is trying to adapt to a new life, and Bond is failing to appreciate the subtleties of a being like Q.
> 
> Thank you to everybody reading/reviewing! And once again, thank you to shipimpala, whose gifsets are truly glorious.
> 
> A small trigger warning in here for heavily implied suicidal ideation. It is transitory, but worth mentioning regardless.

Q is in a state of medically induced catatonia when Bond reaches Medical; the sheet is pulled over his lower body, everything arranged perfectly around him, monitors dribbling off his frighteningly thin body.

Bond cannot help but think. Q had been alright before Bond left; he looks substantially smaller now, breakable in a way that doesn’t fit the endless images Bond has of him.

MI6 found a device in his pocket that was given to Q-branch for analysis; on it was a collection of images, emails, notes, all detailing the maintenance and running of an established brothel in suburban London.

Bond has seen the data collected, and it is enough, more than enough, to neatly ensure the lifelong incarceration of a man he doesn’t know the name of, but has spoken to more time than he can bear to consider. The data obliterates all associates – there are links to brothels all over the city, names and addresses, the evidence of meetings and swaps and acquisitions. Men with power can be surprisingly lazy when they believe themselves untouchable.

More worryingly for Bond, the data has a fair degree of evidence on clients. Yet as Bond continues searching through everything Q’s gather, he finds there is no mention, or even reference, to him. Q has removed him entirely from every record. 

As far as Bond can work out, he is the only person who has visited the establishment in the last handful of years afforded that honour.

Q had been working on this for a long while, far longer than Bond had ever appreciated. Air whistles out through his teeth, as Bond finally understands _why_.

Nobody will tell Q what to do with his life; he has escaped on his own terms, is at nobody’s mercy. He is indebted to nobody. In a colloquial sense, he is free.

Not strictly true, but Bond refuses to examine that right now.

Nobody quite knew what had happened to Q. An MI6 extraction and medical had arrived to find their target collapsed awkwardly against a doorframe with blood in the corner of his mouth, and an unconscious man next to him, as his phone call had indicated.

Medical flitted around the boy the moment they saw him, stabilising his vitals; malnourished, had clearly just taken one hell of a beating, and not for the first time recently. They accepted his name as Q without question, helped him reach for the device in his pocket; he mumbled something inaudible, and Medical sent him into an anaesthetised sleep.

Bond looks over Q’s body. He doesn’t stay, there seems no point; Q will not wake for a little while. Medical flutter around him, fuelled by curiosity more than a desire to heal; Q is novel, and they enjoy that. They keep him mostly sedated for a few days, let him find his way back to consciousness very gradually. Bond does not visit. 

A week passes. Q heals.

It surprises everybody but Bond when Q manages to literally break out of Medical in the middle of the night.

-

Q is chain-smoking on the roof when Bond finds him. It takes surprisingly little time for Bond to track him down; Q would not leave the MI6 building, his newfound sanctuary. 

The security around Medical is quite formidable; double-oh agents try to break out on a nauseatingly regular basis, Bond included – he knows how strong their security is. Q bypassed it in a matter of minutes. To add insult to injury, he then stole the clothes of another agent in Medical, a packet of cigarettes, and a lighter.

He goes where Bond would go; where nobody will follow him. He can be alone, truly alone, in the constant chaos of London. Bond watches Q watch the world, with a certainty that Q sees a different world than Bond ever will.

Bond leaves him for another half hour, ensures that everybody else in the building does too. Q deserves this; a moment to simply exist. He cannot be touched.

Bond stands, Q sits on the edge of the roof, feet dangling. The stolen clothes fit very wrongly; he looks like a child, playing dress-up in his father’s wardrobe. Other than Q’s brief stint in MI6 custody, Bond has never seen Q with clothes that aren’t serving a very specific purpose; it is an odd change, not unwelcome. He is also wearing glasses, for the first time in Bond’s memory.

They do not speak, nor move, for a long while; the sky becomes incrementally lighter, casting dull light. Q shifts every once in a while, lighting cigarette after cigarette with hands that can only be seen to shake if he watches too carefully.

Q doesn’t offer Bond a cigarette, does not invite him to sit. Bond waits. Q is skating along the edge of nicotine poisoning when he finally speaks; his voice is precisely as Bond remembers, the carefully learned consonants of a childhood far removed from this moment.

“Do you understand?” he asks simply; he has the unflinching ability to surprise. He doesn’t look around, stares without seeing at the horizon, the broken forms of buildings obscuring all lines of sight.

Bond watches light break over his home city, the contours of places he doesn’t know and loves regardless. “You wanted to leave on your own terms. You wanted to destroy the people who hurt you.”

Q’s smile is oxymoronic. Bitter, sad, gentle, longing. 

“You don’t understand,” he states softly, with sadness Bond can wholeheartedly agree he doesn’t understand, and wants to remove regardless. 

Q tucks his legs up next to him, moves to standing with evident discomfort in his motions, arms extended for balance as he straightens. He twists towards the sunrise, bare toes just hanging over the edge of the ledge, glancing down briefly; the MI6 building spans over a dozen floors, the empty street below is a long way away.

He tastes smoke-heavy air, the slight breeze lifting his dark curls, eyes closed, his skin phosphorescent. He is captured motion, a heartbeat from flying, from falling.

Freedom is a funny thing.

Bond cannot think, and cannot move. Q’s breathing shudders once, quickly, his body tilting very slightly forward towards the empty space, and he is so beautiful it is agonising to watch. 

He falls backwards, jumping off the ledge and onto firm ground with a quick movement, gasping with pain as he impacts against the concrete; he doesn’t intend to take Bond’s hand to help straighten, but finds he does regardless.

Q pulls his hand away, looks back to the horizon very briefly. There is an indiscernible gleam, like he has passed some test of his own creation, and is quietly proud of that achievement without telling a soul.

When their eyes meet, Bond asks, _pleads_ , for Q to explain – he does not understand, but Q could tell him everything, if he wanted. Q could tell stories, could start revealing fragments of information about himself like he always has, allowing Bond to create an image of components parts, something that can capture Q.

Q’s sigh is pure gravity, anchoring them both to his words.”MI6 could have extracted me a month ago, yes,” Q tells him, fishing for another cigarette out of a packet he’s finished solo, in the space of six hours or so. “Bond, you are intrinsically selfish.”

“How so?” Bond asks, unconcerned by the insult; he has heard worse before, deserves far worse in any case.

The quirk in the corner of Q’s lips could almost pass for a smile. “I was far from the only person in that building,” he says, very simply, causing Bond’s stomach to plummet; he hadn’t even slightly considered that. His priority had been Q, from the outset. Only Q.

Despite that, he had managed to underestimate Q so completely. He had unwittingly demonstrated that he didn’t know Q in the slightest.

Q had stayed to ensure others could leave.

“He caught me copying the information,” Q continued, hands fluttering without a cigarette to hold him steady. “I got what I needed, and one of the nastier beatings I’ve had in recent days. I’m alive. I believe the entire ring, city-wide, has been dissolved. I looked at the records this morning. The people I knew can do as they choose – some will be absorbed back into the same life as before, I know that. Others will find an escape. They have a _choice._ ”

“Q…”

“I need to return to Medical,” Q interrupts; he turns towards the door, gravel crunching beneath his bare feet. “I am being introduced to the research and development sector in a few hours, and quite frankly, I want painkillers first.”

Bond reaches out to him, cups Q’s face in one hand, thumb brushing his jaw. His fingers extend to the arm of the glasses, probing the unfamiliar plastic, and he asks without speaking.

“Contacts,” Q says, as though it should be obvious. “It’s harder to sell a faulty product.”

Bond has no response to that. Q slides out of his grasp, and leaves him alone on the roof, wondering what other fundamentals about Q have completely bypassed him.

-

Q-branch teems with life. A collection of extraordinary minds in one room, surrounded by technology, existing and working in tandem with each other; Q looks almost confused by it, the environment so very foreign. Not to mention he hasn’t been in a single room with this many people for _years_.

Q meets the Quartermaster, earns the nicknames of ‘Q2’ to avoid confusion. He is introduced to Q-branch, and they all greet him quite amicably.

After a little discussion, Q is left alone to work on a computer of his own. He starts typing, eyes bright, cheeks slightly flushed; he looks impossibly alive, and so absurdly happy. He consumes information like a starved man, absorbing everything he can after years barred from it.

Another Q-branch member comments on something or other, Bond cannot hear what. Q laughs, and Bond stops breathing.

Q is not lying or pretending. There is no ulterior motive, no need to coerce or flirt or flatter. He laughs like a child, with unchecked joy, and Bond loves him quite completely.

That realisation keeps Bond from returning to Q-branch for another three days. He then accepts another mission, lasting a fortnight, trying to obliterate the memory of Q’s laughter.

-

Q thrives in Q-branch.

He works relentlessly, eschews sleep in favour of Q-branch, decides to subsist on mostly caffeine. By all accounts, he has also found a love of Earl Grey tea; it had seemed Q had never tried it before.

“You want a story,” Q says to Bond, when Bond visits Q-branch to drop off his equipment. He lingers around his Q, watching him be somebody Bond doesn’t quite recognise, but loves nonetheless. “I’m not going to give you one.”

Q’s stories are his past, and Bond has never earned a right to them.

“Q,” Bond asks, waiting for Q’s undivided attention; the younger man looks up at him from strings of impenetrable code, expression unreadable. “Would you like to come to dinner with me on Friday night?”

Q’s expression shatters into a smile, and he nods almost imperceptibly. “Yes,” he replies, the old light back behind his eyes, and Bond has _missed_ him. “I think I’d like that.”

-

MI6 gives Q enough money to create a life from scratch; they find him a flat near HQ, set up a bank account for him, create paperwork spanning back years that Q can fill himself with a story of his choice. They also allow him to select his own frames for his glasses; the ones Medical supplied were a stop-gap measure at best, and Q has always hated wearing contact lenses.

Two days later, Q goes shopping. MI6 supplies him with some clothing – a few shirts, trousers, not his choice – and the next day, Q places the ridiculously over-priced clothing in the back of a wardrobe he apparently now owns, and buys clothes of his own.

Q manages to spend more in one afternoon than he has spent in three years.

He sits cross-legged on a bed nobody has slept in before, clothing splayed out in front of him, along with a wide and varied collection of toiletries, shoes, essentials. There is a kitchen overflowing with food, things he likes, things he can eat whenever. He cradles his favourite acquisition of the day – a Scrabble mug, ‘Q’ emblazoned across it – and stares unseeingly at everything that belongs to him.

It is _so much._

Q leaves it all on the bed, closes the door on it, blotting it out. There is a cupboard of sheets and towels in the entrance hall and, at the back of the cupboard, a blanket; he tugs it out, items falling everywhere, hands shaking for indiscernible reasons.

He knots himself into a tight ball, eyes tightly shut, and sleeps on the couch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you to everybody. I'll update as soon as I am able.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, my eternal thanks to the glorious shipimpala, who inspired this, and keeps making unbelievably awesome gifsets to accompany this (find them here: http://shipimpala.tumblr.com/tagged/hooker!q)
> 
> Q's behaviour is not unusual; I know some will query his actions in this chapter, but I did explore this, and hope I have done it justice. He is not wholly predictable, and is dealing with a complete break from a life he's used to. So yes, in case you wonder while reading.
> 
> I hope you enjoy. Jen.

Friday evening. Q turns up in an open-necked white shirt, slim fit black jacket made of some indiscernible suede-effect material, black suit trousers that fit him perfectly without clinging unnecessarily.

He wears a rather heavy-duty raincoat over the top, keeping himself guarded from the elements in a way that is perhaps too pronounced to be nonchalant.

Bond introduces Q to his special brand of martini, and Q tells Bond about Q-branch with passion so bright, so intense, it almost hurts. He smiles until Bond thinks Q’s face will split, the younger man almost shaking with a want to communicate every aspect of a life that is his, sharing the sensations that wage war through his body and brain.

Q talks for hours, and Bond lets him. He’s never heard Q talk this much, and he _loves_ it. This is Q. This is the spark he saw when they first met, finally allowed oxygen, now pure _fire_.

The evening passes with Q’s voice running through everything. Bond quietly coaxes Q – who is still too thin – into eating properly. He does so, quite voraciously, happily eating most of Bond’s when he offers. Bond introduces Q to tiramisu for the first time, and will relish Q’s expression for the rest of his life.

Afterwards, Q topples back in his chair, having eaten enough to feel slightly unwell. “I swear, I’ve been living off cigarettes and coffee for bloody _months_ ,” Q laughs. “ _God_ , this is good.”

Bond makes a mental note to take Q out for dinner at every possible opportunity.

“Would you like a lift home?” Bond asks, trying to avoid any possible implications that could be help in that sentence. Q watches him for a long moment, quite obviously assessing Bond; whatever he decides, it allows him to nod, happy to avoid walking home in the dark.

James walks Q to the door, watches Q unlock his MI6-secure flat with a handful of codes. “Would you…” Q starts, stuttering slightly over the words, looking into his flat and back again. “I… would you like to come in?”

“Actually, I should be getting back,” James says, surprising them both. Unlike, perhaps, many people James has known, Q is not in slightest bit offended. He actually gives James a surprised, grateful glance that tells James all he really needs to know.

Q leans forward, brushes a kiss lighter than air against James’s cheek. A sweet, almost childlike gesture; James would not ask for more, and knows well enough when to deny if it is offered. He thanks Q for the evening, lets the young man shut away flickering smile behind a door.

Bond re-establishes his usual masks, and briskly walks away.

-

Q is imploding.

He doesn’t what he wants. He doesn’t know _if_ he wants, for god’s sake. Everything he had has gone; he believed himself able to deal with anything, but _this_. It is not merely a new world, but a new _universe_

The simple, stupid thing that he cannot run from is Bond.

Bond is the bridge between his old life and his new. Q knows that he will not be able to deal with this new life on his own, and quite honestly, he’s spent too much of his life being alone. Bond wants to help him, wants to love him, and Q wants to let him, but it can never be that simple, regardless of how much Q wishes it.

He falls against the closed door, slides down it inelegantly, cries in a way he knows is utterly pathetic.

-

Q rises through the ranks of Q-branch relatively quickly. There is universal shock at the brilliance of this unexpected young man; he is nobody, nothing. His past tells of a childhood that is plausibly true, a life that almost fits. It tells that Q went to university in a city he’s never seen, studied a subject he doesn’t have so much as a GCSE in, lived a life with a logical progression, that everybody can understand.

The ones who see through it do not ask. Everybody has their reasons for hiding. MI6 is a collection of people with nothing and nowhere. They take the orphaned, the destitute, the ones with nothing to tie them down. It is safest that way.

Q has no interest in allowing anybody to keep him. MI6 train him, unwittingly ensuring that Q will never be theirs. He begins to hold power of his own. They grant him further security access, unaware that Q has been able to access the files for days, if he had wanted. They show him the basics, and Q manages the rest on his own.

He is shockingly brilliant. Bond hears the stories of ‘Q2’; it all buzzes around MI6, everybody talking in low voices with tangible excitement, trying to work out who he is, where he came from.

Bond listens, and laughs to himself. They have no true understanding of just how exceptional Q is. These words, these stories, are merely marring the surface veneer.

-

They go out for dinner again. Another restaurant, neutral territory. Q eats steak with tangible reverence, and Bond feeds him chips, both laughing and talking. Q’s smiles are shy and sharp, still a perfect contradiction in terms, as he as always been.

At the door of Q’s flat, they both linger, instinct and intelligence warring in silence. Bond will not – knows he cannot – make any move. He leaves everything to Q.

Q snatches a quick breath, kisses Bond gently.

Both reel from the impact. It is everything and nothing. They have done this before, and far more besides, but not _like this_. Bond isn’t paying, and Q isn’t lying, and that makes all the difference.

Bond bids Q goodnight, and the younger man looks oddly troubled as he closes the door.

-

Q goes out at one in the morning. He wears a dark shirt with a popped collar, artfully faded jeans, hair styled carefully, eyes painted the way he was taught a lifetime ago, only with more class. He looks angular and mysterious and bleak, and nothing like the person he is in Q-branch. That is, of course, rather the idea.

He indulges in shorting out every camera in two-mile radius before leaving the flat. If MI6 wanted to track him, they should have considered more carefully arming him with skills to avoid detection.

He finds a club, drinks until the world is horizontal and blurry, happily latches onto the young guy, about his age, who plies him with drinks for an hour or so before shouting over the pumped music that they should get some air.

Q is not drunk enough to have no conception of what he’s doing. He is, however, exactly drunk enough to not care in the slightest.

The kid is inexperienced and sloppy, kisses fuelled by lust and alcohol, and Q, for once, doesn’t _care_. He returns everything in kind with finesse that is learned but not deliberate, and laughs as he makes the young man keen.

They have sex against the wall of the alley behind the club. Q has done this more than enough times to remember how to angle his body if he wants to avoid rather telling scrapes across his face. He doesn’t know the name of the teenager fucking him, and he cannot remember if it matters. He thinks it probably does. He doesn’t know why.

Everything feels a little hazy, a little out of proportion. He hates the situation in principle, but it is familiar in practise, and that was really what he wanted in going out like this.

He knows how he _should_ respond; he should be at home, in his new flat, basking in everything he has now. He should probably be avoiding situations like these, letting himself be whisked away by an improbably romance that he really wants to deny involves any genuine emotion.

Q hates the thought that Bond could see him like this. It is pure weakness. More devastatingly, Bond would probably never understand.

The kid comes, throws up over his own shoes. Q is conscious enough to roll his eyes, before putting the kid in the recovery position and yelling for help. By the time help comes, Q has long since vanished.

He walks home, and shudders slightly at each passing car that slows anywhere near him.

He staggers through his door, locking it religiously, forcing his way into a bathroom that is about the size of a whole _room_ in the brothel he once lived in. He throws up alcohol. He keeps himself conscious long enough to drink a lot of water from the sink, head under the tap like a dog, his limbs entirely uncoordinated, feeling like he’s been hit by a truck.

Q arranges his body into a loose recovery position on the tiled floor, and allows himself to pass out.

-

Bond is worried. He is on home turf for the next week or so recovering from his previous mission, and going through some training exercises. Bond refuses to admit that he also very much enjoys his opportunities to see Q, as he continues to upend the status quo of Q-branch.

Q looks incredibly tired. Physically, that is obvious. Mentally, less so, but Bond knows Q rather better than most. The part Bond is missing is what happened between leaving Q in his flat, at eleven the previous evening, to now.

He doesn’t need to ask the questions for Q to answer them. They are long past that stage. Q follows him into a neutral space, and they speak quietly in a deserted room where they have enough room to not touch without intent.

“I’m nothing like what I should be,” Q tells him quietly, leaning with his back against the wall, an unconsciously defensive position. “I’m not what you would want.”

“That assumes you know what I want, and also, that I want you to be anything in the first place,” Bond points out. It is getting hard to keep negotiating along the same lines, to keep saying the same words in myriad different orders when he is simply not listened to.

Q’s expression is frighteningly bleak. “Everybody wants something,” he says quietly. “You want me to be open, honest, truthful, and I cannot be. You want me to love you back.”

“Do you love me?” Bond asked directly, half-terrified at what the answer would be.

Q shuddered out a breath, eyes shut, mind whirling horribly. “Yes,” he replied, so quietly Bond almost missed it. Then, more clearly: “It doesn’t matter, though.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve loved before,” Q replied quietly. There was something irretrievably broken in that single sentence, something Bond could not even vaguely hope to fix.

“I am not like him,” Bond tells him with frightening intensity. He would _never_ be. Bond can read flashes of Q’s stories, these rare and precious component parts, and knows precisely what had come of a young man falling in love, a lifetime ago. The delicate, fragile beauty of a boy younger than Bond has ever known Q to be, falling too hard and too fast with nobody to catch him.

The ice in Q’s tone matches the intensity in Bond’s, two forces colliding. “Need I remind you how we first met?”

An intentional, awe-inspiringly cruel comment; Bond reels slightly, unable to deny it and trying frantically to find a way of communicating to Q the fact that matters have considerably shifted since that moment. “Q…”

“You bought me for sex,” Q states flatly; he is visibly trying to keep control, any control, as it slides between his fingers far too quickly. “ _Just_ sex. Not the first time you’ve done that, either. There are probably catalogues of others in your past. That in itself is enough to make me question you very fucking closely, because you are _just_ like him, in that very fucking important respect. I’m not going back, James, I’m _never_ going back.”

Q’s breathing turns slightly harsher, a little more laboured. He covers his face with elegant hands, twisting in and out of himself, shuddering as pain translates to anger, and he slams a hand into the wall behind him. Bond watches Q fall apart.

“Do you want me to go?” Bond asked, with dangerous silence coating the words. Q is being unreasonable, unfair, and yet absolutely truthful and Bond cannot _possibly_ deny what is being said, and knows words are completely irrelevant because god knows Q has heard enough words in his life.

Q half-collapses at the question, body twisting. “No,” he mumbles through the thin air, so clearly hating himself for admitting to it.

“Okay,” Bond replied quietly. He moved closed to Q, shifting onto his knees, giving Q the option of falling forward if he wanted, when he wanted.

He never did. He kept standing through sheer force of willpower, despite spasms that jolted his body violently, trying to calm, failing, fighting, winning after a while, straightening properly.

Q breathes as steadily as he can. “I don’t know who I am,” Q told him, with such truth. He is a prostitute, he is a technician, he is a civil servant. He wants Bond there, more than he can say, but he cannot begin to express why. Bond had been a client, and he shouldn’t have been more. Q has let this go too far, and not far enough.

Bond cannot answer. He would be the first to admit that he doesn’t have the faintest idea of who Q is.

Q takes another breath.

“James, would you like to have dinner at my flat tonight?” he asks, voice steady, the speed modulated perfectly. Bond rises to standing, ignoring the slight creak in his knees, standing opposite Q.

Both have perfected their masks. Neither wears them for this moment. “Yes,” Bond replies. Q nods, and leaves.

-

Q, it transpires, cannot really cook. He can cook for one person. He can cook in a very short space of time. He can make three ingredients last for a month. But when attempting to make a nice dinner for two people, he falls flat on his face, and decides to call in pizzas.

Bond arrives at the same time as the pizza, to his amusement. He therefore knocks on the door of Q’s flat, balancing said pizzas on the palm of his hand – ignoring the heat – and attempts to assume a position of casual nonchalance that Q, as expected, smiles at.

It is intriguing, noticing just how far Bond will go for nothing more than a smile.

They eat the pizzas in front of the television. Q has a minor obsession with world news that Bond humours because he understands, and Q creeps nearer to Bond by millimetres at a time, until Bond can almost feel his warmth, imagines it permeating his skin.

Q’s behaviour earlier is almost entirely forgotten, which is precisely why Bond remembers it. Q’s control rests on a knife-edge, and Bond has an uncomfortable feeling that he is the one holding the knife.

Without him, Q could move on from his old life entirely, with nothing to hold him back. It is tempting, so tempting, to give Q that chance. He is both relieved and angry that he is too selfish to do it.

“You love me,” Q says, completely out of the blue, cutting through the banter and general talk that has been ongoing. The question thrums with meaning, demand and desperation, want, the dull undertone of somebody resigning themselves to nothing while straining for a different truth.

Bond’s fingers rest lightly on top of Q’s. They both know the answer; Q has taken it as a given for a long while, their previous conversations are evidence enough of that. Bond says _yes_ in a quiet, understated tone.

Q kisses him.

It is everything at once. It is the gentle probing of something new and unfamiliar, it is the passion of old lovers reunited, it is the want of weeks and forgiveness of months. They communicate worlds in the space of a single flash of contact, skin on skin in an inexpressively momentous and utterly indistinguishable moment, and neither is ever going back.

There are no games. The puzzle lies cracked. Not solved, not yet, but there is ample time for that, ample time to continue the gentle and mocking and loving removal of the defences and marks that cloak a razor-sharp boy. Bond will take him apart, and Q will revel in every second of it.

Q is fracturing. Bond holds him together and lets him fall apart, either way ceases to matter, it is a means to an end; their end is linked with one another, however implausibly. Bond is hardly a shining example of stability himself, but it works, because it _has_ to work. 

The miscalculations are an inevitability, will cause indisputable chaos; whatever happens will happen, and for a stolen, borrowed moment, they can afford to remember and forget whatever they want, electing to talk later, discuss later, argue _later_.

Q gasps into Bond’s mouth as their bodies lace together, limbs twined organically, keeping them from being split apart. Tongue and lips and arms and fingers trace along the fault lines, acknowledging them, prepared to accept the fallout when it happens, as it will happen.

It is beginning, and it is _beautiful_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus, an ending.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. If you've commented, bookmarked, subscribed or left kudos, even more love to you. Take care.
> 
> For Lex, as always - this could not exist without her. Jen.


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